


A Lovely Lost Cause

by tismabel



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Baseball, Catching, F/M, MLB, Mike clinging to friendship for all he's worth, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Pitching, Romance, San Diego Padres, UST, Wet Dream, boys and girls of summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:46:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8208508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tismabel/pseuds/tismabel
Summary: He’s painfully hard, but not willing to do anything about it because what sort of dirtbag let’s himself fantasize about fucking his new rookie pitcher who also happens to be the first female major league player in the exalted one hundred and fifty year history of America’s goddamned national pastime.





	

In the city by the bay Ginny starts leaving her change-up hanging. Despite what all the sports pundits have declared, Mike knows she’s not a one-pitch-pony. On a good day, when she’s got ‘em all working together she can fool any batter into swinging for the fences on a mid-eighties pitch aimed half a foot outside the strike zone.

Mike thinks it’s magical. He’s caught for other off-speed specialist before. Pitchers that barely hit ninety, but who keep their ERA’s healthy by trickery and deception. He’s never seen anything like the way batters react to Ginny though.

Half a major league players’ job is to predict what the pitcher’s about to throw by reading their stance, the way they grip the ball, the rhythm of their wind-up. Mike suspects that when she’s dialled in, when the screwball, the curve and the slider are all working in concert, that Ginny Baker is about as hard to read as page of braille from twenty yards.

Right now though she’s like a headline plastered on a newsstand. Attention Giants lineup! Next pitch: Slider.

Whack! Runner to second.

Even the screwball is getting crushed, Ginny is huffing and compulsively rubbing the ball as she paces behind the mound.

Mike calls time and trots out to her.

“So, I got a sweet idea.” He grabs the ball off her and looks up at the clear Californian sky. “Mo and I are gonna head out to that new crab shack that does those special chipotle curly fries after the game. Have a few beers while we watch the trawlers come in. What d’ya think?” He tucks his mitt under his armpit and massages the ball with callused hands. “Beautiful day for it!” He declares, totally ignoring the packed to capacity crowd hanging off their every move.

Ginny is glaring at him.

“So how’s about you stop fucking around out here and strike this asshole out. And then the next few assholes that come up, and then you can come out with us. Curly fries!” He sing songs cheerily.

Ginny’s scowl flickers almost into a smirk for a second, and then she huffs. “I just haven’t got it today Mike. It’s not gonna happen and you know it.” She looks frustrated and sweaty. He wants to smooth a thumb over her brow.

Inwardly he chastises himself. She needs help, not some dude lusting after her in the middle of the god dammed pitching crisis.

“What did we discuss the other day. When you let yourself get tense your fingers grip with more pressure, and then your spin velocity increases and the ball hangs. So what do you need to do? It’s easy remember. Just take a breath and focus on me. Where am I framing it? Just put the ball right there, nice and easy.”

He holds out the ball for her and tips his head, beckoning her eyes to his. She’s glancing at the bleachers and he makes a mental note to have a talk with her later about his own techniques for tuning out the crowd.

“Hey!” he snaps his fingers and her eyes whip back to him. This is all he needs to do right now, he thinks. Get her attention dialed into him, letting him guide her through the next few minutes. He nods a little, beckoning her to accept him and take the ball.

She lets out a loud breath, but now her eyes are with him. They’re staring at each other. He’s senses when she settles into it, her focus back in the narrow plane from pitcher’s mound to the home plate. And it’s this right here, this connection he makes with his players. The trust. This is what they pay him a lot of money to do. It’s why he’s a good leader and a great catcher.

It’s why he loves baseball.

But if he’s been honest with himself, something Mike generally avoids, it’s not quite the same as what he has with all those other pitchers. There’s a sort of heightened current between them. Perhaps because she’s different than the others, and that’s undeniable.

He feels sick to his stomach as he realises for him it’s at least a little bit sexual. He doesn’t want to be one of those guys. He didn’t think he was one either, they disgust him. But the more he get’s to know her the harder it’s becoming to ignore. Ginny Baker is a very beautiful woman after all, so perhaps that’s to be expected, but the inward confession still shames him.

She grabs the ball and gives a confident nod as he trots back to the mound. The next pitch he calls she sends right into his waiting mitt, called strike. A minute later he sees the next one heading towards him drop off a cliff about three metres from the plate. A Change-up, sweet has he’s ever witnessed. It leaves the batter swinging at air like a fool.

And Mike knows that this will be what the game remembers him for. His stewardship of this woman who against all the odds has managed to break through a barrier steeped in all the history and myth of this curse of a game. It’s legacy time and when the reckoning comes will Mike Lawson look back and see a man who supported the first woman in the majors, or as the man who fucked it all by not being able to keep it in his pants.

They win the game and Ginny completes a healthy seven innings, with seven hits and three runs. She’s smiling and goofing around with the guys in the locker room afterwards. Mike wraps an ice pack around his screwed up knees and wearily thinks about all that history pressing down on him.

For her it must be twice as hard. The stakes higher, the fall more precipitous. He can’t fathom what sort of strength and fortitude it would take to bear that. Doesn’t think for a minute that he’d handle it himself.

But looking at her now all he sees is a young woman with a healthy glow of victory about her, high-fiving her mates and declaring loudly “Time for beer and curly fries!!”. She looks golden and immortal to him. The best that he’ll ever play with.

Mike thinks, with a feeling of dread, that he might just be falling in love with Ginny Baker.

 

***

 

When mike was thirteen his dad found what was, as it turns out, his badly hidden stash of porn. Being the good Catholic patriarch that he was, he saw this as a prime opportunity to instil some of the key tenants of his beliefs into his adolescent and somewhat terrified son.

Point five went something like “A real man is smart enough to recognise that there’s some women that are just out of bounds, full stop, period. Don’t matter how bad your dick is screaming at you to get a leg over ‘em.” A poet, his father was.

He’d emphasised this point by poking a stern finger in Mike’s temple. “You gotta use that brain that I know is buried in there somewhere. Real men don’t let their peckers run the show.”

So yeah, according to his pop the appropriate course of action after realising you’ve accidentally fallen for your rookie Screwballer would be to bury that deep down. Take some sort of vow of fidelity to honor the integrity of the historic moment. Condition himself to think about it like some medieval quest, like a knight, or some shit like that.

The hopelessness of the whole situation is almost appealing. A romantic spike of despair every time he looks at her now.

Mike was always a sucker for a hopeless situation. He thinks that might be what drew him to the game.

In the car on the way to dinner he feels panicky, wanting to bolt. Him and her and five other players piled into the SVU. Her elbow digging into his ribs as they adjust in the overcrowded space.

“Sorry, shit!” she says as he jerks back. They manoeuvre around each other and settle into their spots. Mike tries hard to not act so badly awkward. Ginny thankfully doesn’t seem to notice.

Mo bangs on the dash from front seat. “Onward driver! A feast awaits” And a general enthusiastic noise erupts from the group as the car rolls out of the hotel parking lot.

Mike spends the whole trip ignoring the warmth of her thigh resting against his.

 

***

 

Amelia ends up joining them at Katie’s Crab Shack. It’s not as awkward as it should be, given the dozen times they’ve hooked up over the last six months. Mike’s head spins at how fast they got to September, two places out of first in the division and not a hope in the world of making the play-off’s. But no one cares about that because it’s been one of hell of a ride and all of the rest of baseball will never experience what the 2016 San Diego Padres have.

Ginny is in the middle of an intense and animated conversation with the shortstop and reserve outfielder, so she doesn’t see Mike staring at her. She looks like she’s about to start shoving the infielder, which, Mike would agree the punk kid deserves.

Breaking his gaze away he notices Amelia surveying him with a cool amused look. He squirms a bit under her scrutiny, and she continues sipping her beer while thumbing through something on her phone without missing a beat.

“I got something on my face? What?” Mike asks.

Amelia’s grin shifts a bit, becoming sinister. “You look like a teenage nerd with a crush on their geometry teacher.”

Before he can stop it happening Mike flushes in embarrassment. Know’s she sees it and it’s mortifying. They’d reached some sort of equilibrium, he and Amelia. After months of fucking and then not fucking because they were fighting over who held more sway with Ginny. Amelia thinks she won, but Mike’s just letting her. He doesn’t want an enemy but he knows in his heart, as far as baseball is concerned, Ginny’s his.

“What are you even talking about?” he thinks he sounds convincingly baffled. Relief floods him however when Amelia’s phone starts ringing and she stands to take the call outside.

She puts the hand over the receiver as she passes him. “Listen, I’ve got a lot invested in this girl and if you go and fuck with her head by taking advantage of that crush she has on you, or acting on the one you’ve got on her, this will not end well for you. But that will pale in comparison to the shit they bury her with.” She shifts her glare and lifts the phone to her ear as she strides past him. “Tell me you have those market stats for the Northern region Barry or so help me….”

It’s like been doused in cold water and given an adrenalin shot all at once. Mike feels something akin to panic. He'd hoped he was passing as normal. Just a tight pitcher/catcher relationship, nothing out of the ordinary here people. Move along.

But of course it was out of the ordinary and Amelia was right. Any consequences for him would be nothing compared to concentrated vitriol that she’d have to deal with.

He won’t allow that. He looks over at Ginny as her arms pinwheel to emphasise a point. He needs to protect her from that and he needs to keep his shit together and be a goddamned mature adult for once in his life.

A second later he realises that Ginny is warmly smiling over at him and it’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. She’s waving her hand for him to come over to their table and before he knows it he’s moving without thought towards her, drawn into her gravity, helpless against its pull.

If Mike had any space in his head for sensible, rational thought in that moment then surely it would be that he’s well and truly fucked.

 

***

 

There’s a reason Mike Lawson is team captain of the San Diego Padres. It’s not just the .311 career batting average, or that he hits with power in the clinch, driving in runs and winning games. It’s certainly not the seven all star appearance, or those two MVPs. It’s probably got a lot more to do with what he does behind the plate. How he can take a strike zone as small as a postage stamp and stretch it out until the umpires are calling it as large as a widescreen tv. The way he senses when his pitchers are in control of their sliders instead of their curves. Knowing when to call for the heat and when to lay off because the batter is dialled and in and crushing anything in the zone.

But mostly, Mike thinks, he’s captain because he can corral twenty-five different personalities and get them all working as a cohesive team. Get them all to focussed on the same thing, chasing runs and winning ball games. Emotional Intelligence is what the Padres’ organisational head-shrinkers call it.

Mike doesn’t know that he’d apply the word intelligence to anything he’s been doing lately. Not when he finds himself waking up later that evening, dream fresh in his mind, sweat damp hair plastered to his forehead.

The room is the same bland but classy sort of place they always put him up in. All these rooms blend into one another, especially in the middle of an interminable nine game road-trip. At his moment he can barely remember which city he’s in, or what day of the week it is.

Especially right now with flashes of a technicolor dream playing out in his brain.

Strong, limber legs wrapping around his waist. His hand reaching between her thighs. Her neck exposed as she arches back, the sight of her laid out before him. His hand grabbing for her hip, her body eagerly rocking against his as she moans. The noise going straight to his dick. Knowing she can take it because she’s stronger than him. The two of them, in sync and attuned to one another even more than they are on the field. The sweet slide as he pushes into her, better than any home run could ever be.

He’s painfully hard, but not willing to do anything about it because what sort of dirtbag let’s himself fantasize about fucking his new rookie pitcher who also happens to be the first female major league player in the exalted one hundred and fifty year history of America’s goddamned national pastime.

He remembers his ludicrous idea about a Knight’s vow. Tries to work up enough catholic guilt to really warm to the idea, but even invoking memories of his Dad’s disapproving frown isn’t doing a lick of good.

According the clock on the nightstand it’s twelve a.m. He’s tired and his knees are aching and soft brown eyes are flashing into his thoughts. He’s still painfully hard. Can’t envision any sleep until that’s taken care of.

Mike Lawson is thirty-four years old and can’t escape this one moment of seemingly unbearable consequence. Stroke himself to a quick and dirty climax or drag himself to a cold shower.

His mind reels away from the decision, muddled and delirious. Trapped here at the witching hour, horny and sad.

A lovely lost cause.

**Author's Note:**

> Confession time: I've never actually been to be a baseball game, on account that I've lived my whole life on the opposite side of world in Australia. All that jargon comes from the several years I was obsessed with MLB after Moneyball was published (an era which includes a disastrous foray into fantasy baseball and randomly picking the Giants as "my team" in what turned out to be the first year they won the world series after fifty odd years in the desert. It was a heady mix. In any case, I hope you'll forgive me any glaring mistakes)


End file.
